(Reuters) -The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it was working rapidly to issue an emergency use authorization for Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine, with the first Americans set to be immunized as early as Monday or Tuesday.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said regulatory authorization should come within days.
A panel of outside advisers to the FDA on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to endorse emergency use of the vaccine, paving the way for the agency to authorize the shot for a country that has lost more than 285,000 lives to COVID-19.
Pfizer has asked that the two-dose vaccine, developed with German partner BioNTech, be approved for use in people aged 16 to 85. Reuters News.